Day 25 – Red Velvet Cupcakes

Well, today is a little difficult because I’m leaving right after work to visit my daughter and son-in-law. I won’t have any time tonight, so I worked on a project this morning before I went to work.

I thought that since Valentine’s Day is coming, I would try a recipe for Red Velvet Brownies that I’ve had my eye for several reasons:

1) The daughter I’m going to visit is about 8 months pregnant and word on the street is that she will eat pretty much anything sweet that doesn’t get out of her way. Also, she has always loved brownies. In fact she used to ask for them in place of a birthday cake when she was younger.

2) There’s just something about “Red Velvet” that sounds really tasty. I don’t know why it appeals to me so much, but I can’t imagine anything with a name like that not being good.

3) The whole Red Velvet thing makes me laugh a little because of a story going back to my parent’s birthday party a couple of weeks ago. You may remember that I took a cake (no, I didn’t make it) to their house and it was Red Velvet. I told them that I bought it because I thought I remembered that one of their moms used to make it and it was a family favorite. They both looked at me blankly and said that they didn’t know anything about that. So I guess there isn’t any family history attached to Red Velvet cake. Too bad, cause it would have made a great story!

So I tried this recipe anyway. Here’s the link: http://tatertotsandjello.com/2013/01/valentine-treat-recipe-red-velvet-brownies.html. I didn’t realize it was made with a box mix, but fortunately it wasn’t hard to find. I was afraid they wouldn’t have it at the store but there were several brands with this flavor. I added the additional ingredients – I was pretty surprised to find out that it took 2 whole sticks of butter. That seemed like a lot to me, but I was too far in to turn back.

I baked it for 35 minutes as recommended, but it didn’t seem anywhere near done so I left it in another 5 minutes. After that it still looked a little “loose” but I took it out anyway. That may have been a mistake because it seemed to kind of fall in the middle. See picture below.

The “fallen brownies”. I wonder if I took them out too soon?

The good news is that after sprinkling powdered sugar over it and cutting up into cute squares it ended up looking ok. And it tastes pretty darn good. I guess that with that much butter it probably would. It certainly does have a dark red color and I’m not sure what causes that, but it would be a pretty dessert for Valentine’s Day. I also like how neatly it cut into small squares – usually this would be really difficult and result in literally “a crummy mess”.

So that’s all I’ve got today – a pan of somewhat successful brownies. I know my daughter is going to chastise me for having a lame post. She claims that she reads my blog just to make sure I don’t write anything embarrassing about her, but I think she’s really looking for good projects.

Have a great Friday night. I have a couple of things planned to do at my daughter’s house so I can keep up – I’ve almost made it thru the first month!